For this devo, I’m actually stealing this example from Father Micke Schmit. I was fortunate enough to be at a service he did, where he talked about the concept of a coffee table. We’ve got a lot of young people here, but I hope you all know what a coffee table is. Let’s brainstorm a little bit. What kind of things do you put on a coffee table?
What do you put on your coffee table? A cup of coffee, piles of paper, books, coffee, magazines? Food and water bottles? Artwork, collections, awards, precious things you want to display?
I want you to think of the coffee table in a different way. What if the coffee table represented your day and your life, and all these things that we set out. What are the parts of our life that we display and want people to see them, or want them readily available?
Our hope as Christians … my hope is that if this is my coffee table, that I’ve got Jesus front and center. He is my primary vision, that I’m just going to see him. I’m going to have my Bible, I’m going to have the Word of God. I might have little things that were given to me in faith that are special to me. But I would want Jesus to be that front and center on my coffee table. What would happen on that day, if that coffee table represented my day?
That’s what I want to talk to you about today, if I’m being completely honest with you, that’s not my coffee table. That’s not my faith coffee table. I wish it was. I wish I could tell you that if my day was represented, my 24 hours was represented on a table, that Jesus was front and center. But sadly, I think that too frequently, in this day of age, we’re struggling with a lot of distractions.
So, I want to talk about this. I want to get a little raw with distractions. Because the reality is, (this is something that God has been really putting on my heart) the things that are really valuable, that create peace, joy, and love that come from God; that come from a relationship with God and a relationship with Jesus, a lot of those things take some work. They take time, and they take work.
We are living in a generation where the theme of our day, and I think most of you would agree, is busyness. Do you agree with that statement? I want to just get a little raw about what’s filling your day. What’s truly filling your day, and how much of your day are you giving to Christ? How much of your day are you working on that relationship with Jesus? Are you calling on him? Are you talking to him? How much of your day is He the center of your coffee table? How much of it?
There’s a couple of things that I want to share, that I’m a little embarrassed about. But I really feel like a piece of dealing with whatever the enemy is trying to do …our theme is victory right) …whatever the enemy is trying to steal something from you he’s going to do something. He does this interesting thing where he just kind nudges you. It goes like this. So if Jesus is right here, he’s going to nudge me and try to make me look over here, away from Jesus. It can be so minute and so small. But as long as you’re not over here looking at Jesus and working on your relationship with God and doing this, he’s like thrilled to death.
So he puts things in our lives, or things happen in our lives, and nudges us away sometimes from looking to Jesus. And I’m personally going to confess, mine is distraction. I deeply enjoy being mind-numbingly distracted. it’s such a sin for me. I’m confessing this is a sin to you. I’m going to say something I’ve never told anybody, but like when COVID was about, I think I was on my phone upwards of eight hours a day, as it was starting to log, like what you were doing. I was on for eight hours a day.
And I still even sometimes will look at that, I keep it on there just as a reminder because I’m trying so desperately to let go of these distractions. I keep my time on my phone so I know. I looked last night and it wasn’t great, it goes upwards to like 5 hours. I can kill 5 hours of my day in complete and utter distraction. I’m not proud of that.
But what I love about Jesus is that He loves when we come back. He loves the victory of confession, by the way. This is like kind of His thing. If we were to go to scripture and everything that Jesus did, and most of the time, what did He say? Your sins are forgiven.
He starts with that. It’s such a great thing to know that we have victory through Christ, that He didn’t just take one little thing, He took everything. He took everything. It all went on the cross for me, so I could live in freedom. Right now, if I am bound to something that’s distracting me at that level, I’m not really living in freedom.
I want to address this idea, and I want us to just have, if you’re willing to go there with me today, I want you to have a moment where you confess something to somebody today. Where you confess something that’s distracting you, or you confess something that’s consuming your table and it doesn’t mean my distraction is stupid, I love distraction. But yours might be that you have a problem with food, or you have a problem with worry and anxiety, or you’re struggling with fear. Or, you’re struggling with a relationship, family relationships, or you’re struggling with a relationship with your spouse or your boyfriend. It’s okay to be honest about these things that are maybe pulling us, that are nudging us away from our vision, which should be on Christ. I want us to be thinking about that today.
That is I wanted to share with you, this idea that we, as Christians, it’s difficult sometimes to walk the walk because we have to battle this all the time. But what I want for each of you is that when you wake up every day, that you have the freedom to know that Jesus is your front and center. That Jesus is the main thing in your life. And that speaking to God and having a relationship is everything to you.
I’ve been recently studying David, and the Psalms. And what I love about David is he’s so raw. Do you agree with me? He is raw. Why are we not getting this? I think sometimes we forget that we can just be super raw with God. You can venge your vengeance towards a co-worker. But don’t go to another co-worker. We need to learn to go straight to God. If we would just go to Him and just tell Him, this is hurting me, I can’t believe this person did this to me, and just like pour, pour our hearts, He’s always going to bring us back to glory. He’s always going to bring us back to peace. He’s always going to bring us back to joy. He doesn’t leave you hanging in that. But we don’t always go to God. We tend to have these little outlets of where to go.
I challenge you today to be thinking about this simple idea of a table. What the world sees when they see you in your fake walk, and what would God see if he was looking at your entire day? Where would your focus be? What are you distracted by? And honestly, we have this dramatic scripture about, you know, if your eye causes you to sin, pull it out. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It sounds so creepy. The reality is that sometimes you’ve got to cut sin out of your life.
Not just you do it. You’ve got to give it to Jesus, because He will help you in that process. But if you can’t identify it, if you can’t speak it, then you’re never going to get to that point to hand it over to him. I’m asking you today to think about something that’s maybe distracting you, maybe something that’s taking your vision, maybe that’s got your head a little nudged and you’re not looking at Jesus.
My favorite scripture to pray over people is that God would straighten your crooked path. (I love how that connects to rock climbing.} So, I’m going to share some scripture on that. Isaiah talks about it twice.
This is Isaiah 42, verse 16 says, “I will bring the blind by a way they did not know. I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and the crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, and not forsake them.”
Isaiah 45, verses 2 and 3 say, “I will go before you and make the crooked places straight. I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron, that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.”
Finally, probably the one we most often know is John the Baptist in Luke, chapter 3, verses 5 and 6. It says, “A voice of one calling in the desert, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked road shall become straight, the rough way smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.”
As you’re climbing today, I love the idea of climbing, and a crooked path. Because how many of you have gotten way off route? You’re just here, I’m supposed to be over there. Today, as your climbing, I want you to think about this idea that God wants to straighten our paths, He wants to cut down our mountains, He wants to make things easier for us. And if we would just lean in, if we would just walk in freedom in Christ, we would have that. We would have that. Because He doesn’t leave us or forsake us. He just doesn’t.
I want you to do one thing for me. As I pray for people, I want to pray over their feet. …let me back up for a moment … As you climb today and you see a bolt, think of that as a little Jesus moment, when you see a bolt today. And just say to yourself, okay, if I can just see you, Jesus, if I can just see you, I’m going the right direction. And that is exactly how climbing is, too. And that’s how climbing is too. If you can just see that bolt, you’re right on track. Don’t judge yourself. You can touch it, you can see it, and you’re fine. Put your hands on someone’s feet. Put a hand on a foot. All three. Touch it! Touch it! Hand on a foot!
Let’s pray: Good and gracious God, we thank you for this sunshine, a light breeze, and just birds chirping, and just the beauty of the place that we live. We call on you today, Lord God, and just ask that you would be with each and every one of us, that you would search our hearts as we ponder how we’re doing, how our walk is going, and that we trust one another so that we can confess to one another. Give us hearts that are just tender and moldable, Father God, and help us to really just trust in you. And Father God, I ask today in Jesus’ name that you would straighten our crooked paths, Father God, that you would create paths that are smooth, that you would just be with each and every one of us and just watch over us, protect that you would just be with each and every one of us and just watch over us, protect us, and just guide us. Be with us, Lord Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen.